tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, an absolute Johannes factotum, thinking himself the only shake-scene in the country. This attack excited general indignation. Henry Chettle, who published Greene's note, denied its truthfulness, declared the accused "to be civil, excellent in quality, upright, honest, possessed of a facetious grace in writing." There was ground for saying, not reproachfully, that he beautified himself with the feathers of others that was the habit of the time and the profession. He did not claim as his own what did not belong to him, but used what had been given out to the public when it answered his purpose. He had no pride in his originality, but wrote to please hist audience. He availed himself, as a legitimate means of attracting attention, to a remarkable degree, of legends, traditions, happy expressions that fell under his notice. Pope said of him:

"For gain, not fame, he winged his roving flight, "And grew immortal in his own despite."

Yet what he appropriated he made his own by giving it life and popular currency. Lowell says:

"We call a thing his in the long run
"Who utters it clearest and best."

We have now followed the poet through his youth, which we will say closed when he was thirty years of age, in 1594. He began sober work late and we will allow him a somewhat prolonged youth. Instead of following him now through the years of his maturity, we will turn back to see what his literary work had been up to this point. He had been associated with others in revamping old plays, perhaps had attempted independent work while he was acquiring his skill as an actor. But we are interested now in his unquestioned work. First we notice his pre-dramatic productions.

The Passionate Pilgrim and A Lover's Complaint have their merits but are overshadowed by other works. The three poems Venus and Adonis, Rape of Lucrece and the sonnets have more than five thousand lines, as much in amount as five books of Virgil's Aeneid. The Venus and Adonis he dedicated to Southampton, as the first heir of his invention. It was published in 1593, when the poet was twentynine years old. The Rape of Lucrece came out in the following year. These poems may have been written, probably were, at a somewhat earlier date. It is to be presumed that they lay before him, open for

correction and enlargement, for months, perhaps years. They bear the marks of youth but as fully illustrate the exuberance of the author's fancy as his later productions.

Shakespeare was, we may probably say as a boy, intoxicated by that old myth that represents the primal tragedy of humanity. Feminine admiration adoration of independent, generous, brave masculinity is one of the elementary facts of human nature. Not long since a woman accounting for the sad career of a gifted young man said: "First it must be remembered that all femininity was at his feet." Shakespeare in his latest play makes Miranda on emerging from her seclusion exclaim: "How goodly mankind is." Our author began life overwhelmingly impressed with this trait in the human family. The Venus and Adonis portrays the ardent devotion of a sensitive and impressible nature to a beautiful courageous personality glorying in its abounding strength. And it leads on to the foredoomed result, the well known outcome of nature, the crushing of hope and ambition by a death which results from brutal violence. The efflorescence of humanity trod

den into the dust by the cruel on-goings of nature has ever been a theme at once fascinating and depressing to the thinking world. On this the youthful poet wrote con amore. The Rape of Lucrece is a poetical rendering of the old Roman story.

I include, as I have stated, the sonnets in the list of youthful and pre-dramatic poems. It is true that they were published when the author was forty-five years of age, but I think they had long been in existence and express sentiments connected with his initial experiences in London life. He had no hand in their publication, so far as is known. They were given to the press by their possessor, probably for selfish reasons, perhaps with hostile intent. They have been long and carefully studied by Samuel Butler and he gives them an early date. In presenting the early life of the poet, then, they have a place, and whatever is to be said of them may come here. They are a memoir of thought rather than action, but are indispensable to a full view of the man.

They number one hundred fifty-four. Together they contain about one-half the amount of one of the longer dramas. But because of their enigmatical character and,

at times, expression of personal feeling, whether of the author or not, they have wakened much curiosity and painstaking study. They were first published in 1609 by Thomas Thorpe, dedicated to W. H., who is designated as their only begetter. Whether this means that he procured them, or called them into existence as the person addressed, is uncertain. They begin with an address to a young man of great beauty, urging him to marry, that his marked excellences may be carried down to the coming generations. Seventeen sonnets are devoted to advice of this kind, repeated and enforced in every form and with utmost emphasis. More than a hundred sonnets follow addressed apparently to the same person in which charges of wrong and confessions of wrong, alienations and reconciliations are recorded: that is, alluded to, obscurely indicated, in poetical terms that need shrewd interpretation.

After these follow sonnets addressed to or relating to a dark lady, with whom he had tribulations that manifest at once the poet's weakness and sense of duty. It will aid us to a correct view of the sonnets and all Shakepeare's works, to notice, by the